Beta: None
Bioware owns the universe and the characters. Jason and Lara are my own characters.
A/N: this is related to my Shepard/Zaeed story, Scar Tissue, in which Admiral Hackett is Shepard's father.
A sudden hush fell over the surviving crew of the Normandy as Admiral Hackett appeared in the doorway of the hospital wing sectioned off specifically for them. Everyone who was able snapped to attention immediately.
"At ease," the admiral said quietly, looking around the room. The crew looked uneasy as they knew exactly who he was looking for. She was one of the twenty-one he wouldn't find.
Hackett had had a sinking feeling from the moment he'd heard the first of Joker's frantic distress calls. And there he was, sitting with Lt. Alenko as a doctor pushed the pilot's dislocated shoulder back into its socket. They were here, so where was their Commander?
Then Joker and Alenko glanced in the admiral's direction. They were arguing about something; Joker "won" the argument and, with great effort, made his way to the door.
The look on the pilot's face said everything he couldn't seem to bring himself to say with actual words: Commander Shepard was dead.
To the galaxy, she was Commander Shepard, the first human Spectre, a decorated war hero and Savior of the Citadel. To a select few, she was Kate, a fiercely loyal friend who would walk through Hell itself to protect those she cared about. But to Admiral Hackett, she was simply Katie, his daughter, the only family he'd had for the last 29 years.
He'd always imagined some other life for her, never military. That was why he had left her in Jason's care for all those years. And she'd known that. She had planned a different life, planned to go to college, eventually take over the Argo.
But after Jason's murder, her plans had changed. Though Jason had left the Argo to Katie in his will, she'd refused to accept it. She had refused to go back to Dallas, let alone the bar itself, instead insisting that her father sell it and her apartment. She'd then given all the money to a charity fund that had been set up for the survivors of the batarian attack on Mindoir. The only memory of the life she'd lived was the tattoo she'd gotten just before Massani had brought her home.
So instead of whatever life she could have had back on Earth, she'd joined the Alliance military on her 18th birthday. And Hackett had gotten used to it, eventually. While he was always proud of her in everything she accomplished, he always worried that her next mission would be her last. Elysium had made her a hero of the Alliance, the Battle of the Citadel had made her a hero of the galaxy. And not even a month later, she was gone.
After Joker explained everything that had happened, Hackett sat locked in his office with a bottle of whiskey and drank a toast, first to those who had been lost on the Normandy; then to those he'd personally lost through the years: to Lara, his beloved wife and Katie's mother; to Jason, his best friend and brother-in-law; and finally, to Katie.